2023 National Poetry Month Celebration-poetry by students

Poetry Confessions: Teatime with the Poet Laureate

Featured photo: Semaj Brown-photo by Emily O’Boyle

BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE. BDCV is an international, intergenerational, futuristic platform that utilizes “applied poetry” as an integrative tool. The platform amplifies literacy capacity, improves skill-based learning and heightens critical thinking, emotional intelligence and cognitive expansion across disparate disciplines of science and art.

BDCV derives from the pedagogy of Poet Laureate Brown, PSL / POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD.

A recent event held at the Flint Public Library, The Community-Wide Convergent Voice Workshop, was inspired by “Black Dandelion.”

The following poems were written by students who participated in the event and/or utilized the BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE platform.

Flint is a Dandelion
Poem by Christian Blake – 6th Grade Greater Heights Academy, Flint

Flint can be a good place
But it can have some people who act really bad
I believe if we work together
We can fix this place up
I don’t like all the destroyed houses and buildings
I want to stop all the killings and fightings
Together we can make it a metropolitan
Flint is a dandelion
We destroy dandelions by cutting them down
But they’re not gone
It regrows and rebuilds itself
The seeds work together
The seeds are us
So if we work together
We can do this

Earth’s Dandelions
Poem by Johnice Taylor – 6th Grade Greater Heights Academy, Flint

Nurturing the Earth
Helps us take care of our nature
The more we disregard our actions
The more dandelions, trees, and grass
Grow no more

Miracle Welch, 7th grade, Grand Blanc West Middle School

¨We are Black Dandelions, we Grow the Power of Goodness
for Generations into the Future!¨
Black is beautiful.
Black is dark.
Black is scary.
Black is the color you see everyday.
But black can’t be seen.
BLACK IS THE FUTURE!
We know that color of skin doesn’t define us.
But it defined those people who were killed.
The people who suffered the burn of the bus in May 20, 1961.
The people that made the Future for me
AND YOU!
They say that police are supposed to protect and be brave.
But were they scared of a Black man walking?
Or just shot him down cause the police felt empowered ?
Or told Black women that they can´t be allowed in restaurants,
after taking care of white people´s children,
and leaving her kids that haven’t eaten in days.
Black is taking for granted.
Black is defined as adsorption of light.
Black can be nice.
Black can be funny.
BLACK CAN BE THE SOLUTION TO EVERYTHING!
But still black is let down into the dark.
The dark is that what you see? Or is it a whole Black family?
Black is being beat and being strung by the neck.
BUT BLACK IS STILL HERE!
¨We are Black Dandelions, we grow the power of Goodness for
generations into the Future!¨

Jada Timms, 7th grade. Grand Blanc West middle School

“Perennial
Promises
Prevailed”
Everyone has a past.
But we grow back.
We all want to go to BLACK!
But why don’t we go to the past?
Do we hope it’s forgotten?
Everyone has had a broken promise.
Do we believe in second chances?
Words are more than they seem.
People want to put us in our places
but…
WE RISE.
This short writing
means something
more than what it
seems.